On Friday I happened to stumble upon the fact that stage 5 of the Amgen tour would be finishing in Santa Barbara THAT AFTERNOON.

I am not a huge cycling buff, but during my time working at the SBR shop in Kentucky I was exposed to my fair share of Tour de France and Beyond the Peloton DVDs. And I thought it would be awesome to see.

So after Memaw graciously agreed to watch HH for the afternoon, I was out the door and downtown in the hot, hot heat.

My friend Rika, who doesn’t particularly like cycling, just happened to be in town and agreed to stand with me to watch.

Around 3:45 the barricades were all up, nobody was allowed to cross the street, officials were yelling at pedestrians to STAY OFF THE ROAD, you could see the blinking lights of the escort in the distance…when suddenly a homeless dude on his cruiser with two large bags full of cans slung over one shoulder came cruising down the middle of the course.

He seemed somewhat tuned into the fact that something was…different, but completely oblivious that he was in the middle of it all.

Cue: mass hysteria.

Every official nearby was yelling and chasing after him, flags in the air. Caught completely off guard by the uproar, Can Man started swerving all over the road to avoid the various people trying to tackle him, almost colliding with one official in the process. There was a collective gasp as everyone envisioned cans strewn across the road as the peloton descended.

Surprisingly dexterous in steering his bike with one hand and carrying an unwieldy load in the other, Can Man managed to avoid crashing into anyone or anything, finally rolling off the road and into a nearby park yelling over his shoulder about how EVERYONE was being ASSHOLES. Crisis averted.

And then Taylor Phinney came flying by.

Crushing it.

Then came the peloton.

It all happened in bouts of about 3 seconds. I thought it was very exciting. At the end Rika was like, “That was it? That’s what we stood here so long for?” But ultimately agreed the homeless dude fiasco made the event worthwhile.

Most of my exercise routine is cardio (running, swimming, (kind of) biking), so the change of pace is nice.

Trainers and PTs have consistently told me since breaking my back that hamstring flexibility and core strength are particularly important for me to maintain.

Since breaking my elbow I’ve been wary of weights, so I find this and TRX to be a nice alternatives for strength.

It makes my arms look good.

There is only one class I really find challenging and worthwhile. I love it. And not just because the teacher, who is most definitely stoned all the time, plays music during class and every time a Grateful Dead song comes on walks by me and goes, “Hey, California!”

There is one drawback: his favorite pose is this thing called peacock.

That is peacock. And, like most yoga poses, no, I have no idea how that resembles a peacock. At all. And yes, it’s as ridiculous as it looks. But he makes us try it every. single. day.

I’ve been attending this class regularly for about a year and a half. That’s a lot of unsuccessful peacock.

The first year or so I mostly just worked on getting my fingers pointing towards my feet with my elbows and forearms touching under my belly, with my legs still on the ground (hard to do with my gimp elbow.) That took a while.

Once I mastered just getting my hands in that position, next was me putting any weight at all on my hands. This usually lasted about .0003 seconds before I face planted into the floor. Over and over. Until I gave up and just laid there, face down, defeated.

Last week I was doing my usual flopping around, doing my best to look like I was actually trying so the teacher wouldn’t come over and pay attention to me, and suddenly…my legs were off the floor. Like magic. Not up high in the air, like the dude up there, but OFF THE FLOOR. I WAS FLYING.

…and then I promptly did something weird to my shoulder and had to take the week off.

Just a month and a half after her first attempt, 62-year-old Diana Nyad tried again to complete a cage-less swim from Havana to Florida, only to be stopped 40 hours and 92 miles in (just 11 miles short of the 103 mile goal) by Man ‘o War and Box Jellyfish stings. She says she’s learned to respect the ocean and won’t try again. I have trouble believing her.

If you’re bored today, check out Diana Nyad‘s progress as she attempts the 103-mile swim from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage (they have a kind of electrical shark-guarding field that surrounds her during the swim, but apparently it doesn’t work for certain types of shark, so she also has a team of “shark divers” to distract any sharks that go after her. Uhh…) She jumped in at 7:45pm ET yesterday, the swim is expected to take about 60 hours. She’s 61.